MIAMI – Willie Randolph wasn’t buying, mostly because he couldn’t. Someone wanted to know about the coincidence of the Mets greeting a new season against the same foe against whom they bid farewell to the old. It is the kind of oddity that makes baseball fans smile, and the kind of reality that makes baseball managers squirm.

“I haven’t thought about that at all,” Randolph said, his face turning to stone and his voice to iron. “That was last season. It was a different season, a different team. This is a whole new ballgame coming up.”

He has to preach that, has to sell that, has to convince his baseball team that there will be no carry-over, no lingering effects from their Sour September of Sorrow, no hangover, no encore, no 5-12 start to this season to match the 5-12 ending to last’s.

In so many ways, the season that begins today at Dolphin Stadium is the most significant one in franchise history. They are closing Shea Stadium, and could send it off into eternity with their first-ever four million attendance figure. Those fans will endure an apocalyptic mess, a logistical nightmare, a parking fiasco, every time they make the pilgrimage. There is a new palace rising in the parking lot. There is a fiercer battle for the city’s baseball dollar than ever before.

Mostly, there are expectations.

And these Mets have to prove they can handle expectations. Two years ago, during their merry cruise to the NLCS, they were still upstarts, the battlers who toppled the Braves’ reign, but when they were first burdened with expectation, against St. Louis, they came up an inning short. Last year, the entire season was rooted in entitlement – their own slogan was “Your Season Has Come,” for crying out loud – and the result was calamitous.

“We’ve always said that we enjoy being the team other teams want to come after,” David Wright said earlier in this spring. “Now we have to prove that we’re worthy of that kind of respect.”

When the Mets take the field today, they will line up behind the most expensive player to ever wear orange and blue, Johan Santana, who in his microcosmic world will be fighting the same fight the Mets will, a battle with unyielding anticipation.

You could sense the weight of this every time Santana took the mound during a spring training during which most every one of his pitches was televised, when every delivery was analyzed, every surrendered line drive scrutinized, every splendiferous change-up fawned over and every hanging slider interrogated.

That’s how much he means to the Mets, to Mets fans, to the Mets’ fortunes, to their desire to bury 2007 in the future rubble of Shea Stadium.

Santana will be fine, even if he puts up a debut as horrific as Tom Glavine’s was in 2003 (when the Cubs blasted him off the mound) or as horrifying as Pedro Martinez’ was in 2005 (when he dominated the Reds and then watched Braden Looper cough the game away). So will Wright. So will Jose Reyes. So will Carlos Beltran.

The concerns begin lofty. They start with Pedro Martinez, who has looked terrific in Florida and who may well be the single most valuable element of the season. If he can be a legit No. 2, it means Oliver Perez and John Maine and Whoever Is The Fifth Starter will all have considerable help in putting up big years. If he stays healthy, if he resembles The Old Pedro, the aura surrounding this team will be significant.

The problems connecting the ellipses will either be terrifying or trivial, and so much of who the Mets are and what they will be depend on discovering the truth. On paper, these Mets should be able to do their best work in October. But paper said the same thing about last year’s Mets, too.

And as bad as their September record was, their October record – 0-0 – was far more depressing.